Cultivating safety in agriculture for persons with disability

People with disability already live, work, and contribute across Australia’s agricultural sector. However, farm safety systems, employment pathways, and workplace practices rarely consider disability in a practical, intentional or joined up way. As a result, people with disability often face increased safety risks, uncertainty about adjustments and safety compliance, pressure to hide their disability or exclusion from work altogether.

This report describes a project exploring how the agricultural safety ecosystem currently supports—or fails to support—safe participation for people with disability and what changes are needed to make agricultural workplaces safer, fairer and more inclusive. Rather than focusing solely on individual workers perspectives, the project examined the whole ecosystem: people with lived experience working in agriculture, employers, farm safety professionals, occupational therapists and allied health practitioners, agribusiness and broader support systems including education and training specialists.